Archive for the ‘Microsoft Windows 8’ Category

I finally upgraded from VMware Fusion 6 to VMware Fusion 7 to take advantage of the new features. It was interesting to upgrade the Windows 7 virtual machine because of the unique failure message it raised.

The message said it was incompatible, and that I should navigate to:

Virtual Machine -> Settings -> Compatibility -> Upgrade

The Upgrade button checks the Allow upgrading the virtual hardware for this virtual machine checkbox. You will get prompted with the Would you like to upgrade this virtual machine? dialog for the next virtual machine.

One thing that gets tedious in the IT community and Oracle community is the penchant for Windows only solutions. While Microsoft does an excellent job in certain domains, I remain a loyal Apple customer. By the way, you can install Oracle Client software on Mac OS X and run SQL Developer against any Oracle Database server. You can even run MySQL Workbench and MySQL server natively on the Mac OS X platform, which creates a robust development platform and gives you more testing options with the MySQL monitor (the client software).

Notwithstanding, some Windows users appear to malign Apple and the Mac OS X on compatibility, but they don’t understand that it’s a derivative of the Research Unix, through BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution). This Unix lineage chart illustrates it well:

Escape from New York, a cult classic, has Snake (Kurt Russell) rescue the President from Manhattan, which in this dystopian film’s theme is a prison. Windows 8 seems like a new dystopian version of Windows where only Microsoft’s browser works to perform real browser activities.

“Windows on ARM [the former name for Windows RT] prohibits any browser except for Internet Explorer from running in the privileged ‘Windows Classic’ environment,” said Anderson. “In practice, this means that only Internet Explorer will be able to perform many of the advanced computing functions vital to modern browsers in terms of speed, stability, and security to which users have grown accustomed.”

While I’ve used Microsoft Excel since version 3 – sent to me for review by Microsoft along with my first non-Mac mouse in 1990 – their browser is something to avoid. It’s the first thing that I disable when installing a new Windows’ instance, by substituting Mozilla’s Firefox.

My question is: Will all those accounts and finance folks who drive Microsoft Office sales because of Excel’s VBA features really drink the Kool-Aid and buy into this new generation of browser tyranny? Let’s hope they don’t! Maybe they’ll take a closer look at OpenOffice 3. 😉

Disclaimer: I’m primarily a Mac OS X, Linux, and Unix user, but like it or not, the reach of the Windows’ desktop is omnipresent in our lives; and let’s face it: Windows 8 will continue to be the most frequent choice for corporate desktops. It’s also the platform for Microsoft SQL Server. Therefore, it’s critical for us to rise up and shout for browser freedom – Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and the little guys too!